For people claiming to be “besieged”, Hamas, through their sophisticated smuggling tunnels into Egypt, never seemed to run out of rockets to fire into Israel. And why is it that Israel is the only one who ever get blamed for “oppressing” the Gazan people? You’ll notice that this is an Egyptian border crossing that’s being opened after four years. Apparently, the Egyptians consider Hamas to be a serious security threat too.

Gaza: A mixture of excitement and anxiety gripped travelers waiting to cross the Rafah crossing on Saturday.

Egypt ruled to permanently open the crossing starting on Saturday. In the first hour after the crossing was opened, 200 Gazans entered Egypt, officials said.

“We as Palestinians are truly thankful to the Egyptian government for opening the Rafah gate,” Dr. Ghazi Hamad, the Rafah border manager and spokesman, told Gulf News.

Under the new Egyptian regime, all coordination for travel goes through the Egyptian embassy.

“I am leaving to meet my relatives in Egypt, something that was very hard to do before,” Samah Ahmad, 26, told Gulf News. Mohammad Abd Al Aal said he was taking his wife and kids on a much needed vacation. “I never took a vacation before. The only times I have ever left Gaza was for medical reasons. I had to pay a lot of money to the Egyptian police and it was very humiliating,” he said.

Women would be able to leave Gaza without restrictions, while men between the ages of 18 and 40 would have to obtain visas for Egypt at the border.

Five members of an Israeli family were killed Friday night when a suspected terrorist broke into their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed them all to death. The 12-year-old daughter who returned home from a friend’s house discovered the bodies. According to police, the suspect broke into the house armed with a knife and stabbed the mother, father and three children, aged 11, three and a three-month-old baby. Two infants, aged 2 and 4, survived the attack while escaping to their neighbors.

One of the paramedics who arrived at the scene described the horrific sights “We could not help the first four stab victims. Following an inspection of the scene I spotted an infant of about three who still had a pulse. We engaged in lengthy resuscitation efforts but had to pronounce him dead,” he said. “The murder scene was shocking. Kids’ toys right next to pools of blood.”

Security sources suspect that the attacker who carried out the massacre cut the fence surrounding Itamar and entered the home of the victims through the window, authorities could not immediately discount the possibility that more than one attacker was involved in the murder. The military blocked the entrance to the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar, as soldiers poured inside and a pair of ambulances departed.

Gaza residents from the southern city of Rafah hit the streets Saturday to celebrate the terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Itamar where five family members were murdered in their sleep, including three children.

Residents handed out candy and sweets, one resident saying the joy “is a natural response to the harm settlers inflict on the Palestinian residents in the West Bank.”

Palestinian Hamas militants wear masks to conceal their identities from the camera as they watch the televised speech of US President Barack Obama as they pose with their weapons in front of journalists at at training base in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 4, 2009. Quoting from the Quran for emphasis, President Barack Obama called for a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims” Thursday and said together, they could confront violent extremism across the globe and advance the timeless search for peace in the Middle East. Photo: Eyad Baba

/looks like Obama really touched the hearts of these Hamas terrorists, I fully expect peace to break out far and wide, throughout the Middle East, any day now